


Back Together

by olivemartini



Series: The Malec Chronicles [27]
Category: The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-22 18:36:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11973276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivemartini/pseuds/olivemartini
Summary: Alec had thought they would just be able to pick up where they left off, just move back in with each other and fall right back in love, but Magnus insists on easing into things and rebuilding their relationship before they jump back in.  Until he doesn't want to wait anymore.





	Back Together

Alec went back to New York before Magnus did.

"I'll come see you as soon as I can,"  Magnus said, using that voice that he only uses when it's just Alec, the only tone that shows how tired he gets sometimes.  Alec pulls him in for a hug, lets Magnus rest his entire weight on Alec, leaning on him for support.  There's been council meeting after council meeting to start the new peace that comes in the wake of Sebastian's reign of terror, and even though the Cold Peace is in place and most of the Shadowhunters are going to be returning home, the downworlders holding seats on the council must stay for just a few more days.  "The minute I get back home, we're having a lazy day."

Alec smiles, but since Magnus is still pressing his face into Alec's shoulder, he doesn't see it.  Lazy days used to be their favorite thing, a day full o the normal, boring moments uninterrupted by demon hunting or summoning or civil wars breaking out.  Other couples try to break out of the normal routine but Alec used to live for it- lazing around in their sweatpants, eating pizza straight from the box, watching a whole season of some show that Magnus forces him to watch in the name of pop culture education.  "I'll be looking forward to it." 

The two of them hear footsteps and break apart, a left over reaction from the days where Alec didn't want anyone to know that he was gay or who he was dating.  Stupid times.  Stupid reasons.  A much younger Alec.  But it was only Jace coming to look for him, who raised an eyebrow and smiled in a way that somehow doubled as a smirk, so the two stopped paying attention to him.  "I could stay, you know."  Alec had offered before, and knew what the answer would be, but he could not help himself.  He liked the idea of living in a house seperate from all the memories of the loft back home in New York, one that holds only promise and not shadows.  But Magnus didn't like the idea of Alec staying, didn't want to feel that decisions were being made and respect given only because he was dating a war hero.  

(Because that's what Alec was now.  A hero.  Strange that it doesn't feel as good as he thought it would.)

"You know I want you to,"  Magnus said, and he had sad eyes, the kind of sadness that seems to burst through without being able to stop it.  Alec sometimes wonders if it's just shown for him, or if its always there and he's just the only one paying attention.  "But you also know that I can't have that."

"I know."  He steps away, his hand slipping out of Magnus' and stepping away.  "But you'll call as soon as you're home, right?"

"As soon as."  Magnus promises, and the sparkle is back, and Alec breathes a little easier.  He doesn't like being away from him now, doesn't like being turned away, even if it is temporary.  "I won't wait a moment."

 

 

 

Alec tries to keep himself busy.

Honestly, it shouldn't be hard.  Not with the whole family uproar over his father staying back Idris and their mother finally starting to working towards divorcing him.  Not when they have to work to scrub down every inch of the Institute under their mother's watchful eye, seeing as sh wanted it to be spotless for guests that never come, and he keeps getting roped into helping make arrangements for Luke and Jocelyn's wedding.  Not when he trains with Jace so the two of them can work out their nightmares, and goes demon hunting on his own when the quiet gets to intense, and spends hours shut up in his room to write to Magnus.

"Do you think things are ever going to go back to normal?"  

Izzy asks it quietly, and Jace and Alec both look over at her.  They are in Max's room, the first time the three of them have been in here at the same time, the only time that the three of them came together to grieve and acknowledge their loss since the funeral.  It almost feels like saying good bye all over again, only this time its bittersweet mixed with the nostalgic, not the rush of crushing, blistering pain that came the first time.  

"Did we know what normal was, living here?  Living this way?"  Jace is bitter, and Alec remembers the stories that Jace would tell about his life before he came to the institute, the scars that he would rarely admit too and would never fade away.  

"I meant-,"  Izzy has a bite of impatience in her voice, and that is better, more normal.  "The three of us.  Just being us, regular kids, going out at night to hunt down demons and coming back to eat dinner together.  With none of this saving the world and politics mixed in."

"I'm afraid that that's not going to be possible, now."  Alec says, and he's certain about it.  There wasn't any coming back from it, not since the day that Jace walked into this institute and intwined his life with all of theirs, not since Clary barreled in and destroyed everything that he thought was true, not since Valentine broke the world and the three of them had to put it back together.  "Once you save the world, you've got a sort of responsibility to make sure it keeps on turning."

"Shouldn't it be someone else's turn?"  Jace says, snappy and sarcastic and so much like himself again that it almost hurts.  And the worst part is that they knew that it would be no one else, that when the time came they would take up arms against the evil and do whatever needs to be done, the way they had in the past whenever something needed to be fix and no one else was willing to take up that cross.   _My fault, my fault, my most grevious fault,_ Jace had liked to repeat, and Alec supposed if that was true, than they still had a lifetime of making up for whatever sins that may stain their hands.

"Well, I'll tell you one thing that will be changing,"  Izzy said, grinning wickedly.  "Alec won't be staying with us anymore, will he?"

Alec doesn't bother asking what she meant, because he knows, deep down, that the moment Magnus asks him to come back he will drop everything to do so.  That he wants nothing more than that sun filled apartment and that bed with sheets more expensive that Alec's wardrobe and Magnus' soft morning smiles.  But he also knows, deep down, that there is a chance that Magnus won't ask him to come back.

 

 

They do have their lazy day.

Alec gets the text at three in the morning, which must have been the time that Magnus portaled back here, and is on his way to the left by eight when he reads it.  When he makes it there, the door is unlocked for him (he no longer has his key) and he creeps into the apartment, all the way back to bedroom where Magnus was sleeping, and crawls in beside him.  "Go back to sleep," Alec says when Magnus stirs, looking at him with eyes still heavy with sleep, squinting into the light that the open door was letting into the room.  "It's just me."

"I knew it was you."  Magnus says, and his words slurred together, and he tugs on Alec's arm until Alec obeys and lays back onto the pillows.  "Too tired to talk.  Just stay."

 

 

Alec does stay.  For three days in fact, three days where he doesn't get called back on patrol or out on a hunt because he's a war hero and apparently heroes get to take vacations sometimes, three days where they eat more take out than Alec thinks he ever has in his life and marathons every single super hero movie that Magnus can magic to them.  Three days where they drink wine that Alec is pretty sure Magnus bought during their trip around the world and sit out on the front steps to drink coffee, where they sleep late and stay up all night, where they don't have to answer to anyone in the world but themselves.  

It's just long enough that Alec has managed to make himself believe that maybe things are okay.  That maybe the transition period had finished during their time in Idris, and that the two of them are ready to move on, to put that awful mess with Camille and the rest of it behind them.  That things are okay, that they're settled, and when he leaves today Magnus would kiss him on the cheek and tell him he loves him and ask him to come back, to have things be like they used to only better, and that they would do whatever it takes to make this work this time.

(It is a two person problem, because over the past few days he's talked with Izzy enough to make himself understand that he isn't entirely to blame for how things turned out, even though the whole shaving a few centuries off your boyfriends life thing probably wasn't his best move.)

Except now they are laying in bed together, the sheets pooled at their waists and Alec mentally preparing himself for the moment where he must get up and leave, putting off that moment by playing the old game of tracing patterns onto Magnus' skin and having him guess what it is.  "A sun?  A star?"  A pause.  "Pentagram!"

Alec laughs and falls back onto the pillows, because he had been drawing a heart but wasn't about to admit that.  "This has been great." He says instead, trying to find a good way to lead in to what he was about to ask.  "Living together like this.  Almost like last time."

"Alexander."  Magnus voice is a plea, and just like always, he could sense when a question was coming and starts it off before it could start.  This was helpful, in the times when Alec had something he wanted to ask but was too embarrassed too, or needed reassurance on something that he didn't want to admit he was unsure about, but not so much when MAgnus was trying to put off a conversation just because he didn't want to talk about it.  This was one of those problems that they needed to work on.  "It's been great.  But I think we should ease into it, this time. We can't just jump into things before we've had a chance to put all the bad stuff to rest.  We aren't ready."

 _You're not ready,_ Alec thinks, petulant and childlike.   _This is all I want._ But he can't say that, so instead he finds himself agreeing, with both of them knowing he doesn't know what they're saying.  "Okay.  You're right.  We can't just pretend like nothing has changed, because things have changed.  We have to start over, not pick up where we left off."

_But have things changed so much?  You are still you and I am still me and I still love you with everything that I have, and I want to be near you every second that I can because I spent so long thinking that I would never get to have that again, so please, please, say to hell with reason and let me back into your life, completely and totally and without a second of hesitation?_

Alec doesn't say this out loud, and Magnus doesn't make the decision on his own, so Alec swallows down the words and tries to take the disappointment with good grace, and when he gets back to the institute that night, he tells Izzy that he might be staying with them longer than planned.

"Just until we're both settled back in,"  He says, wondering if it's a lie even though it's technically true.  "Everything's fine."

 

 

 

Three days later, he wakes to the sound of the bell tolling, the one that comes when someone who isn't a shadowhunter is requesting their presence.  

Alec is awake and out of bed as soon as he registers what he is hearing, pulling on jeans and grabbing his bow and running out into the hallway without bothering to put on a shirt, meeting both Jace and Clary in the hallway, which is a type of awkward he doesn't have time to think about, considering she had started out spending the night in Izzy's room and hers was on another floor.  They don't have time for that though, even though Jace is actually blushing, just trade exasperated looks and hurtle down the stairs until they reach the front doors, only to find their mother already there.

She throws the door wide open so Alec could see who was waiting. "I believe," She says, in a frosty tone that could mean either amusement or disapproval, "that this one is for you."

Alec stares.  Magnus was out on the front steps, looking like he had spent a long, sleepless night debating on what to do with and had finally come up with this.  He looks at his mother for help, and sees none, and then to Jace, who looks even more baffled than Alec feels, and finally at Clary, who heaves a sigh and shoves him forward a few steps.  The door closes behind them, leaving the two of them alone and cutting off the sounds of what might have been a quick sparring match with Jace and Clary.  

"You could have called,"  Alec said, and then wondered why one earth that was the first thing he had thought to say.  Magnus just stares at him, then shoves his hands deep into his pockets, squinting up into the sun like he wanted the ground to swallow him whole.

"I was wrong," Magnus said, still to the sun.  "About easing into it, or readjusting, or whatever the hell excuse I made just because I was scared. I love you, Alexander Gideon Lightwood, every part of you, and I can't stand one more second without knowing that I'll fall asleep with you at night and drink coffee with you in the morning and get to see you walking about in those god awful sweaters all day long."  He takes a deep, shaky breath, like he had to pause in order to calm himself.  "I want everything about you, the good, the bad, and the ugly, every day for as long as you're going to have me.  Just say you'll come back, okay?"

"Okay."  ALec says, which is not the right response but all he can think to say, but it doesn't matter, because they are kissing and Magnus is clinging to him, and the sun is warm on both of them even if the air is cold, and everything is right for one perfect moment, one moment where they don't have to worry about the Clave or demons or the next time they might have to save the world.  One moment where they can just be two people who love each other very much, and are finally coming to terms with exactly what all that means, when you love someone with enough force that it might ruin you both.   "Of course I'll come back.  If I had my way, I'd never leave."

"Good,"  Magnus says, and his smile is dazzling, the smile that was the first thing that Alec thought he fell in love with, because when Magnus smiled Alec found that he could always smile back, even during the bad days. And they had had plenty of bad days.  "That's really very good."

 

 

 

The next time Alec went back to the apartment, there was a key waiting on the counter for him.  And just like last time, Alec took it and slipped it into his pocket, and knew that this time, he would never have to give it back. 


End file.
